The purpose of the Technical Support Core Facility is to provide the technological expertise to: quantitate cellular subsets in cell suspensions derived from reproductive tract tissues, determine the expression of cytokines in and their receptors on cells derived from reproductive tract tissues and analyze the expression of cytokine mRNA and cell surface antigens in tissue sections from the reproductive tract. This Core Facility is composed of three units: (1) Flow cytometry service; (2) Cytokine analysis service and (3) In situ analysis/image analysis service. This facility has been developed as a central service for Program Investigators to provide standardized technology to meet specific scientific needs. The functions of the 3 components of the facility can be summarized as follows: 1. Flow Cytometry Service: The function of this component is to perform comparative multi-parameter flow cytofluorometric analysis on single cell suspensions from reproductive tract tissues and peripheral blood cells. This facility will maintain a panel of monoclonal antibodies (mabs) and, using titered amounts of these antibodies, stain and analyze samples on the cytometer, and report data. In addition, this facility will prepare samples for sterile and non=sterile sorting and sort cells into required sub-populations. 2. Cytokine Analysis Service: The purpose of this component is to provide a multi-tiered approach to the quantitation of cytokine protein and mRNA. Reverse PCR will be applied as a semi-quantitative means to estimate mRNA levels for cytokines and cytokine receptors. Bioassays that specifically measure biologically active cytokine will be used for the detection of cytokines in tissue culture fluids. Finally, flow cytofluorometric analysis of cytokine-expressing cells will be provided. 3. Immunohistochemistry and In SITU Analysis Service: This component of the Core will provide the technology for the immunohistochemical and in situ analysis of cell surface antigen expression and the identification of cytokine-producing cells. With the recent success in confocal image analysis, expanded support for this technology will be provided.